Okay, let's put you in the position of planning this operation. Are you really going to be the guy who says "take him alive at any cost" when he might be armed, might have a suicide bomb strapped to his chest, might be holding a detonator to blow up the whole compound, or any other number of very likely scenarios? This guy is a terrorist, after all, who said that he'd never be taken alive, and so on with the usual terrorist rhetoric.

I'm sorry, but a US Navy SEAL's life is worth more than a mass murderer. Enough people have died because of bin Laden. Take no chances. If he doesn't immediately have his hands up and be face down on the floor spread-eagled and screaming "I surrender" when you burst into that room, yeah, you shoot him. You make that very clear to the men you send into harm's way to get him, and at the end of the day you trust their judgement on the battlefield when they kick down that door and have to make a split-second decision. We who are Monday morning quarterbacking are lucky that we didn't have to make that decision, but I think 99% of people would neutralize the threat when they see he's not prone with his hands up, and the other 1% probably doesn't live long enough to feel smug and superior about it.

I am not for the death penalty, but in a military operation, you do what you have to do to come home safe. If Osama bin Laden wanted a fair trial, he could have turned himself in to the nearest US Embassy on 9/12. Let's stop with the silly idealist nonsense and recognize we're living in the real world, with real consequences to our men and women on the battlefield. I'll say it again, an American soldier's life is worth more than bin Laden's, and any operation to get bin Laden had to have recognized that basic truth.

Ignoring the legalities of what you're saying (because that won't get anyone anywhere), what you are saying is that the President lied when he said there were no orders to kill Bin Laden. Orders can be implicit as well as explicit, but we'll go with your scenario that they were very explicit indeed. Since he couldn't have known in advance that the door was going to get kicked in, and since no general giving orders was likely to have taken chances on him not having a concealed detonation device, what you are saying is that the orders were indeed to kill him on sight and to not take him alive. There's simply no other way to read your post.

I am not saying here whether I agree or disagree with that decision, tactically, legally, politically or by any other measure. What I am saying is that I find the idea of concealing any such order in order to avoid tactical, legal, political or other consequence, to be highly denigrating and insulting to both the office of the President and to the US itself. If the highest in the land is not willing to face up to their own actions and take full responsibility for them, publicly and honestly, what chance those who model themselves after the nation's selected role-model?

If, on the other hand, NO such order was given, implicitly OR explicitly, by the President or any person of appropriate authority beneath him, I would want a full, honest, complete and realistic account of how the soldiers would have accepted a surrender or affected a capture of any kind.

In other words, someone is not taking full responsibility. I don't care whom, I don't care why. These are adults, they should be expected to behave like adults. (Ok, they should behave like society asks adults to behave, as we all know that no adult ever actually does and that lying, cheating and swindling are indeed indicators of behaving like adults actually behave.)

I was not in any top secret meetings where the mission was planned and discussed, nor was I in the room when orders were given to the soldiers who carried out the mission. For what it's worth, the understanding I've gotten is that there was a contingency plan to capture him and extract him alive, however nobody really expected that plan would be needed. After all, he was a terrorist who claimed he'd never be taken alive, and had sent many others out into the world to blow themselves up. Still, somewhere, so

Again, I'd like to have seen us interrogate him, put him on trial, and lock him up in solitary for the rest of a long, miserable life in the dark, forgotten.

That's idealism speaking, though. The reality is, the odds of that happening were very small. The man himself said he would never be taken alive. He was a terrorist, the head of a terrorist group specializing in suicide bombings. Between shooting him quickly when he didn't immediately surrender, and waiting to see if he'd shoot some of our soldiers firs

When your allies are working against you, why should we treat them any better than enemies?

You define "working against us" as "not doing what we tell them". It's a quick and efficient way to make friends into enemies.

Actually, this is how the world works, with nations looking out for their own best interests. Being friendly and politically correct with everyone is not how the world works, and I'm glad nobody so deluded is in charge of the US government.

True, that's how it works - for the USA. Other nations have to be friendly and politically correct, or face the consequences. The USA is the only nation which can send their troops into foreign territory to apprehend someone and get away with it, because of its superior military force and large economic influence.

It only works up to a point, though. I think the USA is heading for two

He had two guns: a pistol and an AK. They were just out of reach in the room. The only good having the guns to hand would have done him is to die with the gun in his hand and maybe taking an American with him on the way out. He'd have died anyway. When they kicked in the door he was asleep and surprised - which is the freaking point of using a Navy SEAL team and top-secret stealth helicopters deep in foreign territory. He declared himself a combatant in war on the US, and acted on that. He was "under arms."

You're offended they didn't fight fair. Well boo freaking hoo. The goal is not to fight fair. It's not to die for your country. The goal is to secure the objective. It's to make the other poor bastard die for his. How this went down was right and proper. The SEAL team doesn't have to let the bad guy pop some rounds off to make you feel better about this.

Don't worry. Bin Laden has been given all the weapons he always used : women and children hide behind, and babies to throw at the soldiers. Oh and you have to walk through the local kindergarten, which is booby-trapped. I don't mean an empty kindergarten, of course. And, of course, at the end of the level you get blamed for every kid that died by all lefties worldwide, as it's so obviously your fault that Bin Laden likes to bomb toddlers.

No more than I would mind that same force taking our president captive, locking him up on foreign soil, trying and convicting him.

Is your argument seriously that we should never kill any foreigners because their countrymen might not like it? Or are you one of those comic-book-logic people who thinks that the mere act of a trial is the difference between justice and vengeance? Because that is cargo cult justice - tripe intended to make the hero seem morally superior.

Let's drop you from a helicopter in a terrorist compound, and see if you meekly ask the leader there if he'll kindly surrender and go back with you to a trial, or if you'd rather have a gun and shoot anybody who doesn't beg to be arrested the instant your boots hit the ground.

This was a military operation, not a police operation. There were time concerns, there were threat concerns, and the list of situational unknowns is a mile long. Rather than quoting bumper stickers, try to imagine yourself in the position those SEALs were in, or imagine being the one to order those SEALs into harm's way. Are you really going to throw your life or their lives away taking unnecessary risks for some philosophical argument about separation of powers?

None of that matters, of course, because guess what? The founding fathers made the President the Commander in Chief of the US military. That's how they doled out the powers. And guess what? The military's job is to kill people, and protect the lives of Americans (themselves included). If such a concept is uncomfortable to you, perhaps you should surrender your citizenship and go live someplace that doesn't have a military, and doesn't care about protecting its citizens.

If the president ordered the FBI to kill somebody on American soil, then you could argue about separation of powers. But arguing about a military operation, especially one as risky as this one? Seriously?

There is a thing called the separation of powers. Executive power should not act as if it were judiciary power.

They weren't. Bin Laden declared war on the United States in the 1990s. After treating the problem of Al Qaeda essentially as a police problem until the 9/11 attacks, the US Congress issued the Authorization for Use of Military Force which is functionally equivalent to a declaration of war on Al Qaeda. This is now a military problem. Bin Laden was killed as the head of Al Qaeda in a military operation in a war zone. No need for judicial involvement, which is very limited on the battlefield anyway. Admiral Yamamoto suffered a similar fate in WW2.

In case you think there could be peace, read Bin Laden's Letter to America [guardian.co.uk] to see his demands. The short version: everyone convert to Islam, then abolish your Constitution and govern the country under Sharia law... in every detail. (Beheading, stoning, crucifixion, whipping, ban alcohol,.... the works.)

Seriously. Where should we, as America, start compromising on Sharia law? Should we abolish the Constitution? Should we stone adulterers? Ban alcohol? Abolish religious freedom? (Or from a moral standpoint, Osama wasn't a US citizen. I am, and I don't get to demand any of that shit. Why should my government listen to this guy and not me?)

I'm not a fan of Obama, but I agree with the counterproposal he used in the negotiation with bin Laden. You know, the proposal that was most likely 5.56 mm wide and delivered at about 3500 feet per second by a SEAL "negotiation team."

That's a very convenient view of your enemy, takes all the hard work out of convincing people to kill them without question. But from my limited grasp on psychology these people are just like you and me if our country was being invaded or raped from afar and we would go to the same levels.

Separation of powers? Like the fact that the Chief Executive is also the Commander in Chief of the military, and can therefore order military operations (yes, even ones that kill people) against an enemy that declared war on us in 1996? Especially one who Congress voted for an Authorization for the Use of Force against?

I'm not a huge fan of the current President, but come on. The judiciary has no place in the process of making war. Two Presidents and six Congresses did this by the books.

Really? Let’s change president for you, would you prefer to be shot in cold blood right where you stand or taken alive. I agree it’s a kangaroo court system once your on foreign soil but its better than being in a body bag, and at least you get to have your say. You have many more chances of escape, not to mention how much harder it would be to kidnap a person than it would be to just shoot them. It’s no wonder the military wanted Osama dead with no trial, because if he did go to trial (sure he would be found guilty) he would of exposed decades of dodgy CIA practices and the reasons he hates America so much. We have the Geneva Convention for a reason not just so we can claim the Nazis were super evil.

and yes i think america should stop killing people, especially in cold blood.

I'm one of those foreigners who're a little worried about what USA will do next in the name of "justice".

Wikileaks has exposed corruption in my own government, is perfectly legal, and is basically doing the job our newspaper journalists should do, so I want to support them. But according to the logic of many Americans, anyone who indirectly helps their enemies is also an enemy. If I donate money to Wikileaks, will I also be put on the list for "supporting terrorists"? Will the US government try to seize my foreign assets and arrest me if I put my foot on US soil?

The truth is that the only function of a trial is to ascertain guilt or innocence. The punishment is the part that brings about justice, and when there can be no doubt of guilt, there is no particular need for a trial.

There are a number of reasons there should always be a trial:

1. People are "certain" of someone's guilt and turn out to be wrong all the time.Osama Bin Laden is actually a good example of this. Everybody's assuming he's behind the 9/11 bombings, but there wasn't enough evidence for FBI to put out an arrest warrant. Until his death, Obama was formally only wanted for the bombings against the US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. (FBI Most Wanted [fbi.gov])The video released shortly after the 9/11 bombings, where he allegedly took the blame for the attacks, was badly translated. Osama certainly seemd to applaud the bombings after the fact, but it's not clear what part, if any, he took in actutally perpetrating them.The Guantanamo prisoners are another example. American politicians assured us they were "the worst of the worst", and now it turns out some of them weren't even held because they were suspected of terrorism; they were held only because the US military wanted information from them.

2. Allowing assassinations without trial provides the people in power with a convenient way to do away with their political enemies, as long as they can whip up a public frenzy against them. This can and will be abused.

3. A trial lets all the facts on the table.Perhaps Osama is guilty, but not of what he is accused of. Perhaps there are more guilty parties, but the people in power wants some of them to go free. Executing someone without trial is a convenient way to punish your guilty enemy, while letting your guilty friends get away.In this particular case, embarassing facts that may surface during a trial includea) Incompetence on the part of Homeland Securityb) Facts regarding the close ties between the Bush family and the Bin Laden familyc) The US government's previous support to the terrorists they are now fighting... plus everything else which has been going on behind the scenes and we don't know about yet.

4. Legality. If we start making exceptions to the law when someone is "obviously guilty", people will start abusing it for their own ends, or simply do it out of laziness, and point to the previous cases as justification. The only way to avoid this is to err on the side of caution and always follow the law, even when someone IS obviously guilty.

I don't think the USA did it in the name of justice, they did it in the name of security. They took 9/11 as an act of war, and then vowed to pursue Bin Laden and his group until the threat had been neutralised. Taking out their symbolic head was one of their objectives to achieve this.

Admittedly the USA justice system is flawed, for example their pursuit of Assange and perverting the Swedish and English justice system via their influence or arresting Skylarov on behalf of Adobe. It shows they are not above

From the link the parent provided:CAUTIONUsama Bin Laden is wanted in connection with the August 7, 1998, bombings of the United States Embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya. These attacks killed over 200 people. In addition, Bin Laden is a suspect in other terrorist attacks throughout the world.

So I would agree with the parent that the FBI didn't have enough evidence to tie him to 9/11. Otherwise the FBI would have certainly mentioned it.

If someone had told me ten years ago that the USA would set up detention camps where they brought in foreign nationals for questioning and torture without trial, I would have dismissed that as a ridiculous conspiracy theory. Unfortunately, reality has a way of catching up to you.

In case you don't know, a number of non-US citizens have had their assets seized without trial because they were believed to finance terrorism, or have some other kind of connection to terrorism, but without being charged with any f

I'm just curious whether you merely used that example to make a rhetorical point, or whether you actually equate using highly trained military agents to do a precision operation designed to eliminate one well-known evil mastermind, to using several commercial airliners full of innocent civilians to destroy skyscrapers full of more innocent civilians, causing them to collapse onto even more innocent civilians, just because both the military operation and the terrorism operation both occurred over the politic

When it's enemy soil during a war there are strict rules of engagement that are internationally recognised. When it's the soil of someone who is ostensibly your ally and you do it without their knowledge or permission, it sets a very dangerous precedent. It's easy to say he was a monster so it doesn't matter, but the point with creating exceptions to defined rules is that they might not always work in your favour. What if it had been Julian Assange - plenty of people in the US were calling him a terrorist o

The truth is that the only function of a trial is to ascertain guilt or innocence.

No, there are other functions of a trial. For example to demonstrate to "the people" that they live in a society of laws and due process. Just like free speech is protected by letting Neo-Nazis spew hate the benefits the law affords citizens is protected by observing due process even in cases when you "know he is guilty."

And for example there is the right, in most western countries of which I am aware, of the accused to face

Do you trust the President to do that? Maybe our current president makes good decisions, but it sets a bad precedent. Maybe the next president decides that the entire liberal wing of the senate is guilty of treason, beyond a shadow of a doubt. Oops! The problem isn't that Osama was guilty. The trial wouldn't be for him. The problem is that, well, no one should have the power to unilaterally execute whoever the

If that president personally planned and ordered the cold-blooded murder of thousands of innocent civilians by flying airliners into skyscrapers, or similar methods, then nobody would mind at all. That motherfucker would deserve assassination.

Honestly, I think that international relations would be a much nicer game if the bulk of the casualties were among the upper echelons of political and military power, on all sides, rather than concentrated among a mixture of civilians and common soldiers who are allocated the overwhelming majority of the killing and the dying.

I agree, I mean taking credit for 3,000+ deaths in one swoop who were also unarmed should give him the right to a fair trial

A few considerations:

First, if in fact somebody is particularly, notoriously, heinous, surely they won't exactly be looking forward to a fair trial? All those cases where the 'obvious' guilt of the suspect offends the public should be cakewalks for the prosecution, given the value of rule of law, is the short procedural delay really a big deal?

Second, there are situations(almost certainly not his; but that isn't the point) where the public/media are incorrect. That's sort of the reason that rule of law is considered superior to lynch mobs.

The third is more pragmatic: Against certain classes of opponent(internationally notorious mediagenic terrorist figureheads definitely being among them) fair trials are among the most powerful things you can do to them, the more boring, the better. You don't want the last few pages of their upcoming hagiography to be something out of an action thriller: 'went down in hail of bullets during a shootout with sinister international assassin squad, a true martyr of the movement'. You want it to be as unbelievably dull as possible. 'Taken into custody, charged with X,Y,Z, went before FOO district court, convicted, sentenced, just like any common criminal.' Obviously, getting shot kind of ruins your day; but it buffs the hell out of your legacy. Only cool people get assassinated. They more shadowy and badass the assassins, the better. Getting tried and convicted like any common scumbag, though, especially if the authorities stubbornly treat you neither better nor worse than anybody else being processed through the system, is basically the most banal exit possible.

The procedural delay would have been a big deal to the soldiers in that compound, if their delay resulted in a notorious terrorist who had sent many on suicide bombings activating a suicide bomb of his own. Going into that room, they had to make a split second decision with a great many situational unknowns. Osama bin Laden was not immediately surrendering, as he most certainly could have, and thus any threat he might have posed to those soldiers was swiftly eliminated. A show trial (and that's all it would be, since everyone knows the outcome already) isn't more valuable than the lives of those soldiers.

This wasn't a lynch mob, this was a military operation conducted by honorable soldiers well versed in the rules of war and military justice. Is there anybody who isn't a complete loon actually saying otherwise? Bottom line, on a battlefield, you are well within your rights to shoot the enemy if they enemy hasn't surrendered. You don't stand around waiting to see if they'll surrender if the enemy is before you. Rules of engagement to the contrary just gets good soldiers killed. The enemy is your enemy whether they're currently shooting at you or not.

I agree with you on your third point, but for decidedly non-pragmatic reasons. Philosophically, Osama bin Laden living out the rest of his days in a jail cell would be so much better than him being dead. But pragmatically, to capture him alive would be an extreme risk to our soldiers in that compound, and a lightning rod for future violence. Yes, he's a martyr now, but there's no shortage of those anyway.

Again, bottom line, he was a military target, not somebody we were serving a warrant to. Our soldiers did what they had to to come home safe in a very dangerous situation. The operation was a massive success, and a charismatic voice for terror has been silenced. This is such a huge win for everyone but an increasingly irrelevant group of murderers. Why is this in any way controversial?

I agree, I mean taking credit for 3,000+ deaths in one swoop who were also unarmed should give him the right to a fair trial

Actually, Osama never took credit for those deaths, which is why he wasn't formally wanted by FBI for the 9/11 bombings (FBI most wanted [fbi.gov]). The video which was shown on television shortly after the bombings, where he allegedly took the blame, was badly translated.

Personally, I'm not entirely sure if Osama had his hand in the 9/11 bombings, or if other people did it inspired by him

Actually, Osama never took credit for those deaths, which is why he wasn't formally wanted by FBI for the 9/11 bombings (FBI most wanted [fbi.gov]). The video which was shown on television shortly after the bombings, where he allegedly took the blame, was badly translated.

Personally, I'm not entirely sure if Osama had his hand in the 9/11 bombings, or if other people did it inspired by him

Actually, Bin Laden did take responsibility for the 9/11 attacks, on more than one occasion. Here is one:Bin Laden clai [www.cbc.ca]

in military slang, "used his wife as a human shield" no doubt actually means "the wife was closest to the door when we kicked it open, so we shot her first".

The wife rushed the SEALs while OBL was standing there, and they shot her in the leg. They shot OBL in the left side of the head, twice. If they wanted to kill his wife, they would have, especially since she charged them. They didn't kill her though, they left her there with a wounded leg. At any rate, the "human shield" woman, regardless of whether or not she was being used involuntarily, was not the wife in his bedroom and wasn't covering OBL, she was covering one of the other men who died (possibly the courier who fired on the SEALs when they landed, or OBL's son).

In theory I agree about a fair trial too. The best outcome possible, in my opinion, was have this guy rot in solitary for the rest of his life in a Federal prison, in the dark, never hearing a single human voice ever again. I wish just such a fate on every terrorist arrested by the police.

This was not a police action, however. These were military soldiers going into an unknown situation, and I have no doubt in my mind they did what they had to to be safe, and come home alive and well afterwards. Osama bin Laden could have been wearing a suicide vest, his finger on the detonator behind his back. He could have rigged the whole compound to explode. He could have had a weapon in his hand, obscured by the woman rushing the SEALs. There are so many different scenarios, each more dangerous than the last, and while I'm against the death penalty, including summary executions, I recognize that in the battlefield, a soldier has to do what a soldier has to do to come home safe. Osama bin Laden was a terrorist, and the difference of a split second might mean death for you, and your whole team. By all means, if he's not spread-eagled, his hands up in the air, and his face on the ground screaming "I surrender" in perfect American English, don't risk it and pull the trigger. These are highly trained operators, and I would never question the split-second decisions they make in that situation.

The fact of the matter is, Osama bin Laden chose to be a terrorist, chose not to turn himself in to the nearest US Embassy to be arrested and taken to trial, and chose not to surrender when we finally caught up to him. His death was entirely of his choosing, he just didn't get to pick the time and date.

It's what I admire most about foreign governments, their outward secularism. They may be religious, just as much as an American politician, but the difference between Europe and Asia (Japan at least) is that it's not a liability to not talk about your faith when running for office. In America, if you came out as an atheist you'd never make it beyond local levels of elected offices, and only in very liberal areas. Religion should be a private matter between a man and his god, or man and whatever he believes,

Those two countries are irrelevant,their GDP too small to talk about. Taiwan you don't need to talk about your faith. Japan you don't need it. Singapore you don't need it. And of course, obviously, China.

More: "Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the devil?"

Roper: "I'd cut down every law in England to do that."

More: "Oh, and when the last law was down, and the devil turned on you, where would you hide, Roper, all the laws being flat? This country is planted thick with laws from coast to coast, man's laws not God's, and if you cut them down -- and you're just the man to do it -- do you really think that you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the devil the benefit of the law, for my own safety's sake."

I doubt we could build a fancy hut like that in the USA and have it certified as residential or habitable. From the looks of it, it's a small crackerbox house, with apartments in the rear that we would typically call a storage shed,. ( I rent two storage spaces to store useless junk with sentimental value in that appear to be bigger then each room in the outbuilding.)

Well, unless you mean costing that much to grease the hands of the building and code enforcement and zoning commission or something. Then poss

The map in TFA uses the "fy_" prefix, which is a long-standing way of denoting community maps with no particular objective. The two letters were originally an initialism for "Fuck You" – often bowdlerized to "Frag Yard" or similar.

My thoughts as well, unless there's corroborating reports. But the reality is it doesn't really matter at the end of the day. The deed is done and us peons have been told how it went down, and that is how it went down.

You can't refute an insider who doesn't exist. The same "journalist" (Ulsterman) claiming to have an insider is also a birther--though curiously, his insider didn't warn him that the long form birth certificate was going to be released.

I and they (though I'm not of their ranks) will give Obama credit for leaving when his term is over.

You don't have to love everything he's done. He's disappointed many of his supporters. Those who make up crap like this because they just hate a black man in the White House are the nuts I'm talking about.

Does anybody actually take the tea party seriously? Granted it's hard to define a movement with no membership requirements, but there's plenty of nutters in there to make the rest seem a bit dodgy. The best think the GOP could do at this point is distance themselves from it.

Yeah, I'm sure those mean old Democrats forced practically ever single Republican pundit, senator, congressman, and governor to back the Death Panels lie. I'm sure the Democrats forced the Republican state governments to push through "Birther Bills." And after 18 months of teabaggers screaming that "Obamacare will gut Medicare", it was those mean old liberals who forced the GOP to vote for a budget to end Medicare once and for all.

Your party is filled with liars and thieves and scum of the worst sort. St

Fuck off with that false equivalency bullshit. The left wingers you describe are a tiny and insignificant fringe. The insane teabaggers have seized control of the GOP to the point of pushing out moderate candidates, passing "birther" laws at the state level, and setting up their own caucus. There is no comparison.

High ranking officials have lots of meetings. The big boss only has enough to understand the risks (seals killed/held hostage, major backlash from an important "ally", the effective end of his presidency, a major morale boost for Al Qaeda and the Taliban) and rewards and the odds of success before making the call.

That's how pretty much every organization in the world works. You really think CEOs sit in on every design meeting? They, like Obama, have more important things to do than listen to the mucky de

It wasn't an assassination. Technically speaking Osama could have surrendered, it's just that he'd have to do it immediately without any hesitation to be accepted. But he could have surrendered. I don't think that anybody seriously believed that he could be taken alive.

Where any country on earth = Belarus; China; Ecuador; Egypt; India; Iran; Iraq; Israel; Japan; Malaysia; Mongolia; North Korea; Pakistan; Saudi Arabia; Singapore; South Korea; Taiwan; Tonga; United States.
Here in Australia as well as most of the world he would not be put to death.

Actually, while Israel has a long and storied tradition of killing enemy leaders, when it comes to TRIALS there's only ever been one death sentence imposed in Israel -- Adolf Eichmann. Israel does not have the death penalty.

If we're talking about rules, a war on an abstract concept is not a real war. A war is an armed conflict between states. The rules of war become meaningless when you're fighting an abstract concept. Whom are you going to declare war against? How do you know when the war ends and you're obligated to send home the prisoners?

The US government's talk about "war on terror", terrorists who are "enemy combatants", "war zones" in countries they are not at war with, and so on, are nonsense from the perspective of, f

To be honest, I don't care so much about the map itself. It's just pleasing to me there are still FPS games out there with map editors that allow you to make such maps in the first place. So many games are missing level editors and mod tools that it's becoming novel for them to do so (and yes CS:S is getting a bit old, but it's still fun and still supported by Valve). If you're trying to make maps for something like one of the latest versions of Call of Duty, forget it.

Generally any company that sells their engine offers up the dev tooks (i.e.SDK) for free - because it's good, free, time proven marketing. There are only a couple of high end game engines that are completely closed source.

Actually, word is that they built a full scale replica and trained in it until they knew the layout like their own home. Retired SEALs have been saying that that's the standard practice for missions like this, whenever there's sufficient time.

I think that's a pretty good bet. You can't build a replica of the inside of the buildings, but you can at least make a mock up of the rest. I'm not sure why they'd use a computer simulation unless they really had to. OTOH, the secret service moved over eventually so who knows.

i agree that celebrating someone's cold-blooded killing is a bit morbid, but i think the US has been quite subdued, all things considered.

remember the "we got him" press conference with Saddam Hussein? talk about gloating. there wasn't even discussion about whether the muslim world would see their handling as being a bit distasteful. this time round there's more sensitivity than i've seen from any "winning side". credit where it's due... it's not perfect, but you can't say the handling of this wasn't th

making Counterstrike maps to re-enact somebody's death is just... twisted and wrong.

Nothing is sacred on the internet. If you expect anything to be treated with respect, or will be offended if it isn't, just unplug your ethernet cable and turn away. Because it will be disrespected as much as possible. Osama himself would have been much less offended by a CS map than some of these pictures [google.com], like perhaps this [google.com] (assuming he is as religious as he claimed to be).

It's still one of the best online FPS games for the PC, and has a large player base and active community. PC games have more longevity, the original Starcraft was only recently replaced with a sequel, and people still play the first one.